


the broken bones of our childhood

by FiresFromOurHearts



Series: You Stood Up For Yourself [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aromantic, Aromantic Asexual Blaise Zabini, Aromantic Asexual Character, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Character Study, Don't copy to another site, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, I don't know what else to tag, I'm so so proud of this work so please give it a try, Love, Marriage, Not really part of the series so can be read alone, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sexual Confusion, Sexuality, Sexuality Crisis, Slytherin, but a negative view of marriage, kind of, more like discovery?, society's views of love, someone let me know about that please, this could be angst but I don't think so?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 21:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19304650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiresFromOurHearts/pseuds/FiresFromOurHearts
Summary: blaise thinks about love. about love being shoved down his throat, about a society that makes him think he wants that love, wants to grab it from the stars and let it huddle in his cupped hands.and he thinks about it. thinks about the way he doesn't get it.yeah, he thinks about that a lot.he's young, fourteen maybe, when he reads aromantic for the first time. reads aromantic, reads asexual, reads queerplatonic relationships. and he thinks, oh, maybe this is it. maybe this is me. he thinks about society's romance and thinks about friendship, thinks about platonic love, and thinks maybe this is right.(CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE)





	the broken bones of our childhood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aletterinthenameofsanity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/gifts), [katebxshop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katebxshop/gifts).



> Title stole from a song by Sleeping At Last (titled Unmade), specifically this little bit: the aftermath/is cracked wood where fences stood/and the broken bones of our childhood. And yeah, I totally spent my entire time listening to Sleeping At Last typing this (specifically the album Atlas: Year One which has fabulous songs). It set the mood really well and really added onto creating this piece (and I am so, so proud of it). It's a bit of a different writing style and I haven't written this way before, but I think it fits really well? (Also, this technically doesn't need to be part of the You Stood Up For Yourself series, but I like to imagine it is, even if it's a standalone as well.)
> 
> Anyway, this is dedicated to aletterinthenameofsanity who, I hope, appreciates this because I've fallen in love and that's generally how I feel after reading your works so... yeah. 
> 
> Edit: It's also now dedicated to katebxshop because this is one of my favourite pieces that I've ever written and I want to share it with them, (although I am getting onto another piece for them soon) and I think they'll appreciate it
> 
> Check out the end note for more information regarding this piece and the feelings it came from?

blaise is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. he's young and growing into his limbs, his height. his wand hand remains steady, his mind only grows more dangerous, knowledge swallowed with the idea of preparedness. he is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, growing older with each second and minute and moment that passes. he is losing brief flashes of happiness, finding more anger and hatred buried in his heart, tasting bitterness on his tongue.

he is young and they are all young. they are slytherins at war because they are always at war. there are stereotypes and house rivalries and public personas and desperation. there is always desperation.

the world is not kind, is not nice, is not full of mercy no matter what others want you to believe. blaise knows this. pansy knows this. the slytherins - they knew this. of course they know this. look at them. look at them, first years, eleven and ten and tiny and confused and being booed. they are sitting at a table, flinching and holding onto their composure with their nails, biting back the tears that well up because they can't give in. they are ten and eleven and they know that their allies will never be what they expect, that their friends aren't trustworthy. they are young but already they know. slytherins don't get kindness.

blaise grows up dangerous, grows up deadly, grows up. he is learning always, learning about himself, about the world, about magic. he is smiling and laughing and crying and whispering. he is in the shadows, in the light, in hogwarts. we will say he is laughing, because that is kinder for a boy in a house that gets no kindness. we will say he is smiling because that is a better picture than the alternative.

this is the thing, though. blaise grows up and finds himself unsure. he grows up and knows of love. he knows love doesn't always work out, that marriage is only a social construct that is made to enable someone to abuse the system. he knows that love is riding into the sunset. he knows that love is giggling and smiling and deciding that this is how you want to live your life. he knows that love is kissing and sex and having a family. he knows that love- he knows what being in love means. he knows what being in love looks like.

his friends fall in and out of crushes like he fell off his broom as a child but always got back on. they get into relationships and he watches off in the sidelines as they fall into something good and fall out of it eventually, left to pick up the pieces with nothing but words. he sees all of this and he thinks about love. about love being shoved down his throat, about a society that makes him think he wants that love, wants to grab it from the stars and let it huddle in his cupped hands.

and he thinks about it. thinks about the way he doesn't get it.

yeah, he thinks about that a lot.

society takes love and makes it grand, talks about kissing and sex and marriage and relationships and crushes. talks about this being normal. talks about normality. talks about nothing else. doesn't let anything else be spoken about. society grabs love like it is something it needs, like it can't live without it.

society doesn't say romantic love. just love. that's all there is, don't you know? romance is love. love is romance.

blaise doesn't get it. he understands it logically, as a concept. yet he watches people fall into crushes and relationships and say they're in love and cry when it's all over but get back up anyway. he listens to them talk about butterflies in their stomach, about wanting to hang out with someone all the time. and he thinks that it sounds familiar - part of it, at least. he thinks about growing old with someone beside him, with people beside him, with his friends. he thinks about wanting to spend time with his friends all the time. he thinks about growing old. he doesn't think about kissing anyone. he doesn't think about having sex. he thinks about not understanding it. he thinks about the way it doesn't make sense. he thinks about being young, thinks maybe that's the reason.

he's young, fourteen maybe, when he reads aromantic for the first time. reads aromantic, reads asexual, reads queerplatonic relationships. and he thinks, oh, maybe this is it. maybe this is me. he thinks about society's romance and thinks about friendship, thinks about platonic love, and thinks maybe this is right.

he thinks these labels fit, makes them part of him, engraves them into his bones, into his identity. thinks of society and scoffs at its love, thinks about others like him because there must be others. he can't be alone.

and then he's sixteen and unsure once again. he's sixteen and he's still growing and he still doesn't understand but the labels don't seem to be him. or they are, but they don't make everything better. he looks at people and wonders if he wants to kiss them or wants them to kiss him and if he's just forced his mind to ignore any attraction. he wonders if he's made himself like this, wonders if he's wrong and now he doesn't know what's real and what's false. he thinks and he wonders and it doesn't work. he's confused and unsure and uncertain and nothing just clicks. there isn't a solution offered. this is real life and there's no happy ending, just uncertainty and worry. there's just this general fear of living alone and dying alone and growing old alone. there's just the fear that his friends will drift out of his reach and he will not be able to pull them back, that he will fall out of their orbit and they will lose sight of him and that will be the end.

blaise is sixteen and knows he doesn't get a happy ending. he's a slytherin, so of course he doesn't. but there isn't an ending without a flicker of romance in it, without a hint of romantic love to come. so there's blaise, at sixteen, staring out at the world and now knowing who he is. not knowing what he is. just knowing that there aren't happy endings for people like him.

but the story doesn't have to end there. there's more to this story. we could let it end there, yes, but we don't have to. we get that choice, so we might as well take it.

there are children, kids, ten and eleven and young, so very, very young. they sit on a stool before a crowd and a hat tells them where to go. this, they are told, is their personality already. personalities don't change. there's just this - an end point. there's no more. you already know who you are.

they're told this or maybe they learn this or maybe it's just some innate belief everyone holds at some point. but they learn that this is false. they learn that they can change, that everyone changes, that there's nothing predetermined here, only them. they will change because that's what happens in life. a single trait doesn't make them and they don't have to be identified by a single characteristic. they don't even have to keep that characteristic their whole life.

the future is unknown but sometimes you don't let that bother you. sometimes blaise sits at the edge of the lake and stares at it, watching ripples flow outward. sometimes he sits in the common room and stares beneath the lake and considers the different worlds that are separated by a sheet of glass. sometimes he sits by a window and stares down at the grounds of the castle and thinks about how they are children. how they have always been children.

so yes, let's say blaise is confused. let's say the labels don't seem to fit, that nothing just clicks. so what? there is more to blaise then his sexuality. there is more to blaise's life than thinking about romance and how society has failed him in multiple ways. there is more to blaise than his thoughts about how they are all children and deserve better, deserve more.

the future is unknown but that can be comforting. the future is what you make of it. you take the present into your own hands and you shape it. you can impact the world. blaise has friends who stand beside him, who sling arms over his shoulders, who hug him. he has people to talk to, to laugh with, to comfort him when he cries. he can rant to these people, can trust them.

tell me blaise doesn't know love and i will laugh at you. tell me that romance is better than friendship and i will pity you.

maybe one day blaise will be eighteen and still unsure and having felt this way for years. maybe it won't even matter. maybe it isn't about being certain but about that uncertainty. life isn't a certain thing. nothing is certain and perhaps that is certain.

because blaise has friends. because blaise has love. because blaise has a future he claims with his own hands. because blaise has a life of his own making. because blaise exists and sometimes that's enough. sometimes we make that enough.

tell me about those slytherins and i will tell you that blaise is bitter, that he thinks they deserve better, that they all deserved better, that they are children. tell me about marriage and i will tell you that blaise doesn't believe in marriages working out. tell me about love and i will tell you that blaise loves his friends. tell me about romance and i will tell you blaise is uncertain. i will tell you the same. i will tell you that we're going to try and make it better, that we're going to believe that life won't always be confusion.

blaise is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. he is growing. this is how it will be always. he is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and so are millions of others.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying I used Blaise to write my own feelings out, but listen - I'm not saying I didn't do that either. The writing style I've tried to use is one I really admire and I love how the words flow. Not sure whether I pulled it off or not, but I hope I did? Like, it would be nice to say I did, and regardless, I'm really proud of this one. 
> 
> So, I think I was about 13 when I picked up on the fact that romantic/sexual attraction was a thing I just didn't feel and that I really didn't care for romance at all. I don't know when I read about aromantic people, asexuality, and queerplatonic relationships - but I think it was some time around then, probably. Anyway, I just felt like these words really meant something, y'know? Like I felt something that explained me (especially queerplatonic relationships and the idea of them) and I pretty much spoke to one of my friends straight away about it. That said, a few years down the road - not many, I don't know though, it kinda hit me that I didn't want to live my life alone? This idea of not having anyone because everyone fell in love and would leave me by myself - it was just this terrible idea. And then I just wasn't sure if I did experience romance or not, and how could I tell? How would I know? What if my mind was just ignoring all signs of attraction or what if I made things up myself to trick myself into believing that I did experience romantic love? So, yeah, the idea of labels not quite fixing anything was a large motivating point here. I really wanted to use that, since I haven't ever gotten to explore it previously. 
> 
> Honestly, I almost ended the story just after this paragraph:  
> blaise is sixteen and knows he doesn't get a happy ending. he's a slytherin, so of course he doesn't. but there isn't an ending without a flicker of romance in it, without a hint of romantic love to come. so there's blaise, at sixteen, staring out at the world and now knowing who he is. not knowing what he is. just knowing that there aren't happy endings for people like him.  
> But then I was like, but I want a better ending, a hopeful one. I didn't just want to end on that note, because I get enough of that in my own head. I don't need it anymore. I'm aware of it. But I have a choice - I can make this ending somewhat better. And so I tried to do that, tried to give this some more hope, tried to point out that we get to make our endings, that we don't have to let things be as they are. 
> 
> I definitely let my own voice come in at the end, without hiding behind the façade that is Blaise, and I feel like that works. The thing about marriage though - that's definitely inspired by a friend of mine, who just doesn't see how they can work happily and I figured Blaise with his mother's constant widowing (is that the right word?) would kinda feel the same way. So I slipped that in, because there are probably quite a few people who don't see marriage as something that will end happily in reality (I just forgot how to spell that wow).
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed - because I loved writing this, and I really hope you guys loved reading it.


End file.
